


watch me stumble over and over

by QueenWithABeeThrone



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Force Ghosts, Gen, TFA spoilers, attempted humor, the major character death tag is there for a canon death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2015-12-26
Packaged: 2018-05-09 12:41:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5540432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenWithABeeThrone/pseuds/QueenWithABeeThrone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You tried,” says Leia, flatly, when Anakin shows up to tell her of his efforts after telling Luke, “to hit my son on the head.”</i>
</p><p>or: Anakin Skywalker during <i>The Force Awakens</i>, the not-completely-serious edition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	watch me stumble over and over

**Author's Note:**

> this was made in under an hour and is probably riddled with Mistakes, but I needed more cracky "Anakin yelling at Kylo Ren" fic and I wasn't getting a you. it. turned into this.
> 
> as a note, it's been some time since I saw TFA, so pls forgive any errors in characterization. (I got Anakin's characterization from TCW so.)

Anakin would like to say that this is not, in fact, all his fault. Despite, you know, Leia’s kid clearly idolizing him to the point of trying to emulate some of his more terrible choices.

And to the point of digging up his grave to take his mask with him.

“What the _hell_ ,” says Anakin, when he pops into existence to see Ben-- _Kylo Ren_ , whatever, Ben is still underneath no matter the name he wears--praying to his _mask_. “No, seriously. What the kriffing _hell_.”

The only indication Ben gives of having heard him is a slight jerk of the head, but then he bows it again. Murmurs something about wanting to make him _proud_.

“Oh,” says Anakin, with no headache because ghosts can’t _get_ headaches, “for _fuck’s_ sake.” He coughs, says, in as commanding a voice as he can muster, “Ben, I know you can hear me. Stop praying to my mask and listen to me-- _go back home_. Your mother and your father want you back.”

Ben doesn’t say anything back. Anakin stomps around to his front, sees that the kid is very determinedly looking down at his mask and not acknowledging his presence.

“I _will_ finish what you started,” Ben promises.

“Do not even think about it,” Anakin says, a little heated. He liked being at peace, _dammit_ , he’s maybe a little pissed off that all this is happening to him just as he’s enjoying that peace. “Do _not_.”

\--

“How goes your quest?” Obi-wan inquires, as Anakin stomps back into the netherworlds of the Force.

“ _Terribly_ ,” says Anakin. What he wouldn’t do for some Corellian brandy right now. “He still won’t listen--I swear, it’s like trying to talk to a brick wall.”

“You have all the time in the world, Anakin,” says Obi-wan.

“One of my grandchildren has Fallen and dug up my mask, my son is hiding out from him in some far-off system, and said grandchild _refuses to listen to me_ ,” says Anakin. “I’m a bit short on patience right now, Master.” Especially patience with Ben. Force help him, the next time he visits the boy, he may end up breaking into wherever it is the afterlife keeps all the good liquor and drinking _all of it_.

\--

He checks in with Luke, every so often.

“Was it ever this hard with me?” Anakin plaintively asks, as Luke pours them tea. Okay, pours himself tea. Because Anakin can’t drink shit.

“Not exactly,” says Luke, a little more careworn and a little more tired than Anakin ever wanted to see him. “You did listen. Eventually. Ben will listen to you. Eventually. He’s incredibly partial to you the way he never was to me.”

“At least he talked to you,” says Anakin, running a hand through his hair. “He’s got it into his head that the best way to talk with me is to dig my mask up and talk to _that_ about--trying to bury the light within him, or something.”

“That means there’s still _some_ light in him,” says Luke. “Light he’s actively trying to bury, but--you can still _reach_ him, in a way I never could.” And there’s the sadness in his eyes that Anakin hoped he’d never have to see, the guilt Anakin still feels, sometimes. Unlike Anakin himself, though, Luke has never done anything to deserve that haunted look.

“You could,” Anakin argues. “He just talks to my mask all day, I’m beginning to think you hit him in the head a bit too hard during training.”

Luke stares at him in shock, and says, “You _saw_? Oh, kriffing hells. Of course you saw that. I swear, it was an _accident_.” He pauses, buries his face in his hands, and says, “Do you think if we hit him on the head again he’ll come to his senses?”

“Why not,” says Anakin, an idea occurring to him, “I’m desperate enough.”

\--

Operation: Cognitive Recalibration goes-- _poorly_.

“You tried,” says Leia, flatly, when Anakin shows up to tell her of his efforts after telling Luke, “to hit my son on the head.”

Anakin coughs. “Yyyyes,” he says.

“Because you thought,” she says, “that a hard enough hit would, and I quote, _undo whatever brain damage happened to him during Jedi training and get him to come to his senses_.”

“Yes,” says Anakin, scratching the back of his neck.

“And instead?”

“He sliced up everything I threw at him,” says Anakin. “Also, a Stormtrooper who got in the way at the wrong time. _That_ was an awkward conversation.”

“Father,” says Leia, with a sigh, sitting down in a chair and massaging her temples (and when did she get so _old_ , Force, his children have become so old and so tired and it hurts to see them like this), “the effort is appreciated, but I don’t think you really know how brain damage works.”

“It was Luke’s idea,” says Anakin.

“Somehow,” says Leia, “I can believe that.”

\--

And then there’s Rey.

Bright-eyed, desert-worn, good-with-her-hands Rey, scavenging for her next half-ration and waiting for her family to come back to her, and Anakin can’t--can’t _tell_ her, that her family isn’t coming back, that they left her here for a good reason. That sometimes he wants to smack his child and his child’s spouse upside the head for abandoning his granddaughter here, but he gets it.

So he keeps her company, whenever he can. In between shouting at Ben and trying to get his attention (he’s resorted to elaborate one-man plays while the kid’s trying to commune with his mask, he is _that desperate_ ), keeping Luke company on his island, giving Leia as much assistance as he can with fighting the First Order, and resting up in the afterlife, he finds Rey and says, “All right there?”

And Rey grins when she sees him, and tells him all about the things she’s found today, about the ships she’s seen and the things she’s managed to buy from the town. Talking to Rey is a welcome respite from the shitshow of Anakin’s afterlife lately, and for a while, that’s how his routine goes--yell at Ben to get him to turn _back_ , talk to Luke and keep him company, tell Leia how her son is doing and what little Anakin himself has managed to find out of the First Order’s plans, visit Rey and listen to her tales, then go back to the netherworlds and complain to Padmé and Obi-wan about how terribly things are going.

And then--well, the thing that Anakin will later refer to as _the busiest day this afterlife has ever seen_ happens.

\--

That adventure is a bit of a blur, in itself. Anakin’s a little bit grateful he’s a ghost, because with all the running around he’s doing trying to keep things together (and when did _he_ become the afterlife’s welcome wagon, _hells_ ) he’s pretty sure that if he wasn’t a ghost, he’d have broken something.

(“Hells,” breathes Anakin, stumbling when he feels the Force-- _heaving_ , as though sick from all the deaths the First Order brings about with their new weapon. _Alderaan,_ he thinks.

“Worse,” is Obi-wan’s grim reply when Anakin gets there.)

He’s ragged and tired when he finally gets back to the afterlife, and all he wants is to find Padmé, or find Luke or Leia or Rey, but instead when he finally gets back--

“Oh,” breathes Han Solo, looking so much older and so surprised, “nine kriffing _hells_.”


End file.
